nest. Spend a little more than he makes and tell anyone who will listen how you have your heart set on a big wedding—white dress, fancy flowers, custom cake, and champagne toasts. Get the right people to give a damn, and one of Swain’s new friends, or one of yours, will mention how you can earn extra cash, quick and easy. You guys take the meeting. One of you wears a wire.” Malone snapped his fingers. “And bam. We’ve got ’em.”
Swain cleared his throat. “It won’t work. She can’t sell her end of it.”
Now she spun fully to him. “What is your problem?”
“Nobody’s going to believe you like me, choux, much less want to spend the rest of your life with me.” He threw the nickname in just to nudge her past pissed to righteously pissed. “You’re not that good an actress. Need me to prove it?”
Her chin came up. Her eyes flashed green. With a voice that could freeze a man’s balls off from fifty feet, she issued a challenge. “I’d like to see you try.”
Resisting Cadet Eden Brixton was a full-time occupation under normal circumstances, but when she went stone-cold bitch on him, he was a goner. Two steps closed the distance between them. He cupped the back of her head, tilted her face up, and covered her mouth with his. For one glorious moment, she stood stock-still, offering the soft, heady heat of those lips that had played a starring role in his jack-off fantasies for damn near twenty weeks. Then she tore them away, cocked an arm back, and threw a punch that landed hard enough to spin his head around.
Be still my aching heart.
Luckily, his heart was a lost cause, pretty much from birth, but he slowly straightened and worked the ache out of his jaw. When he was sure it wasn’t dislocated, he addressed the room in general. “See?”
Malone raised his bushy eyebrows. “See what? Looks like true love to me.”
Buchanan stood. “Okay, people, here’s the bottom line. We want a joint op, and we need two new faces to pull it off. That makes you not just our best possible candidates but our only possible candidates. You’re our team. Make it work.”
Chapter Three
From her vantage point on the stage of the First Baptist Church in Richmond, Eden scanned the congregation of friends, family, and colleagues of the graduates of KDOCJ Basic Class 514. Like all of her classmates, she wore her starched and pressed uniform—in her case, a tan button-front shirt, bright brass badge, tan pants with navy blue stripes down the sides, and a stiff leather duty belt with all its custom snaps and flaps for various tools of the trade, not the least being her department-issued Smith & Wesson M&P 9, with the gold ported barrel Bluelick PD had sprung for to congratulate her on graduating number one in her class. Number one overall, as well as in firearms, patrol procedures, criminal law, vehicle operations, and traffic/DUI, for anyone keeping score.
Her eyes lighted on someone in the front pew who most definitely kept score. All six feet five, bald, brown, brawny inches of the Brick were hard to miss. Half Black, half Hawaiian, wholly badass, the man didn’t blend into a crowd. Beside him—equally attention-catching in her own way—sat slim, blond former prima ballerina Cecilia “CC” Brixton with her flawless alabaster complexion and twinkling blues eyes. Both beamed with pride, at the moment, and Eden automatically notched her spine a little straighter. Slouching on graduation day would not do them proud. Her dad would mention it, just as he’d mentioned her less-than-first-place finishes in physical training, defensive tactics, investigation procedures, and tactical responses to crisis situations. Yes, she’d been number two in each of those, but number two was “chorus,” not “lead,” as her mom frequently pointed out. Her parents loved her—a fact she never doubted—but they set a high bar for their only child. One she’d been jumping for twenty-three years. And their pride in her was equally undeniable, but in that moment, she suddenly had a vision of herself standing at attention for their approval at thirty…forty…fifty? They were never going to declare the challenge met. Was that up to her? Was the setting of one’s own bar a facet of independence she’d failed to realize, much less achieve?
A startling thought, that.
Commander Atwell chose the moment to conclude his remarks at the podium. The audience stood and applauded the graduates. With his congratulations ringing in her ears, she exited